Part 31 (1/2)
”Wretched worm! that can wipe away such an insult so tamely! Thou wert never valiant, thy heroic deeds were so many murders. Those whom thou didst slay, thou didst butcher as doth a headsman. Thou couldst surprise like a thief, but to fight like a man was never thy way, and the blood that stains thee is the blood of fettered slaves. Thou abominable thing! The very victory is abominable which we have gained over such a writhing worm as thou art. I should pity my sword if it ever came into contact with thine. Let others say if they will that they have conquered Ali, I will only say that I have struck Ali Tepelenti in the face.”
”By Allah, the one true G.o.d, that thou shall never say!” thundered Ali, leaping from his seat; and quickly drawing his sword, he whirled it like a glittering circle through the air.
Mehemet retreated a step backward, and drew his Damascus blade with a satisfied air.
”Fight not, Ali; go inside!” exclaimed Eminah, violently seizing Ali by the sword-arm.
Tepelenti shook her off and, with his sword flas.h.i.+ng above his head, fell upon the sub-seraskier. Mehemet parried the stroke with his sword, and the next instant a huge jet of blood leaped into the air from Ali's shoulder.
Eminah, full of despair, flung herself between the combatants. She saw that Ali was bleeding profusely, and throwing one arm around his knee, with the other hand she held up before the seraskier the amnesty of Kurs.h.i.+d Pasha.
”Look at that! The general swore that Tepelenti should not be slain.”
”Not by the executioner,” replied Mehemet; ”but he did not guarantee him against the sword of a warrior. Come, thou coward! or wilt thou hide behind the petticoat of thy wife?”
Eminah stretched out her arms towards Ali, but the old man thrust her aside and rushed upon Mehemet Pasha once more; but before he could reach him another thrust pierced him through the heart. Without a sob he collapsed at the feet of his foe.
The terrified odalisks rushed shrieking into the camp, whilst outside a b.l.o.o.d.y combat began between the warriors of Mehemet and the warriors of Ali. The former were numerous, so it was not long before Tepelenti's guards were cut down, and Mehemet, with a contented countenance, returned to camp. A silken-net bag was hanging to his saddle-bow, and in it was the head of Ali.
Kurs.h.i.+d Pasha washed his hand when the head was placed before him.
”I was not the cause of thy death!” he cried. ”I guaranteed thee against the headsman, but not against the sword of warriors. Why didst thou provoke the lion?”
On the day fixed, beforehand, the Tartar horseman arrived in Stambul with the head of Ali. The hours of his life had been calculated exactly. An astronomer who determines the distances between constellation and constellation is not more accurate in his calculations than was Kurs.h.i.+d in determining the date of his enemy's death.
On that day the Sultan held high festival.
The Tsirogan palace, the Seraglio, all the fountains were illuminated, and Ali's head was carried through the princ.i.p.al streets of the town in triumphal procession, and finally exhibited on a silver salver in front of the middle gate of the Seraglio in the sight of all the people.
So there he stood at last, on a silver pedestal in front of the Seraglio. And the prophecy was fulfilled which had said, ”A time will come when thou shalt be in two places at once, in Stambul and in Janina!” So it was.
Ali's dead body was buried at Janina, and his head, at the same time, was standing in front of the Seraglio. At Janina, a single mourning woman was weeping over the headless corpse; at Stambul a hundred thousand inquisitive idlers were shouting around the bodyless head.
At that gate where the head of Ali was exhibited the throng was so great that many people were crushed to death by the gaping sight-seers, who had all come hither to stare at the gray-bearded face, before whose wrathful look a whole realm had trembled.
At last, on the evening of the third day, when the well-feasted mob had stared their fill and begun to disperse, there drew nigh to the gate of the Seraglio an old yellow-faced fakir who, from the appearance of his eyes, was evidently blind. His clothing consisted of a simple sackcloth mantle, girded lightly round the waist by a cotton girdle, from which hung a long roll of ma.n.u.script; on his head he wore a high mortar-shaped hat, the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of the Omarites.
All the people standing about respectfully made way for him as, with downcast eyes and hands stretched forth, he groped his way along, and, without any one guiding him, made his way straight up to Tepelenti's head.
There he stood and laid his right hand on the severed head, none preventing him.
And lo! it seemed to those who stood round as if the severed head slowly opened its eyes and looked upon the new-comer with cold, stony, stiff, dim eyeb.a.l.l.s. This only lasted for a moment, and then the Omarite took his hand off the head and the eyes closed again. Perhaps it was but an illusion, after all!
Then the dervish spoke. His deep, grave voice sank into the hearts of all who heard him: ”Go to Mahmoud, and tell him that I have bought from him the head of Ali Pasha and the heads of his three sons, Sulaiman, Vely, and Mukhtar, and a whole empire is the price I pay him therefor.”
”What empire art thou able to give?” inquired the captain of the ciauses who were guarding the head.
”That which is the fairest of all, that which is nearest to his heart, that which he had the least hope of--his own empire.”
These bold words were reported to the Sultan, and the Grand Signior summoned the Omarite dervish to the palace, and shut himself up alone with him till late at night. When the muezzin intoned the fifth namazat, towards midnight, Mahmoud dismissed the dervish. What they said to each other remained a secret known only to themselves. The fakir, on emerging from the Sultan's dressing-room, plucked a piece of coal from a censer, and wrote on the white alabaster wall this sentence, ”Rather be a head without a hand than a hand without a head,” and n.o.body but the Sultan understood that saying.